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Geology’s dry, rocky road

20 February 2021

9:00 AM

20 February 2021

9:00 AM

Notes from Deep Time: A Journey Through Our Past and Future Worlds Helen Gordon

Profile Books, pp.299, 20

There has been an argument recently on Twitter about how to do nature-writing. Should it involve the self? Should it be poeticised? Has the oh-my-oh-me-ism of recent nature books got out of hand? Can one not see a blackbird now without considering the nature of consciousness and the tragedy of existence? In short, shouldn’t the nature writers calm down a bit and become ‘more honest’, as one contributor to this row put it?

Egregious sentences were quoted out of context.

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